Labour’s sleaze hunt lacks teeth
LABOUR’S sleaze-finder general is on the prowl. Rachel Reeves has become the prosecutorin-chief as the Westminster frenzy over allegations of “dodgy” donations intensifies. With Labour MPs smelling political blood, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister has been the party’s leading voice in the media demanding a show trial for Boris Johnson.
“We want an inquiry that will root out sleaze and cronyism,” Ms Reeves declared as the row over the funding of soft furnishings for the Prime Minister’s Downing Street flat deepened this week.
She branded the conduct of Mr Johnson and his allies as “cynical and shabby”.
Ms Reeves and her leader Sir Keir Starmer sense the recent spate of Tory troubles is finally allowing Labour to score some blows.
Their party was humiliated by the failure to halt Brexit and struggled to gain a hearing when criticising the Government’s handling of the Covid pandemic.
Senior Labour figures hope to revive the party’s greatest hits from the 1990s – when allegations of financial impropriety meshed with sex scandals to create an aroma of Tory “sleaze” that sped up the disintegration of John Major’s government.
IT IS a line of attack that has boosted morale among Labour MPs. News of an Electoral Commission probe into a suspected loan from Tory donors to help the Prime Minister spruce up the living quarters at his official residence gave this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions a crackle and whiff of cordite that has been missing in the Commons since the dreary Covid-safe hybrid sittings were introduced over a year ago.
Yet for all the excitement among Labour representatives, a key ingredient appears to be missing in their formula for engineering the downfall of their hated Conservative foe.
Sleaze is only an effective political poison when mixed with incompetence. The Major government – damaged by the Black Wednesday sterling collapse and bitter splits over European policy – was seen as being filled with toxic levels of both.
Mr Major’s successor Tony Blair rapidly became embroiled in scandals that belied his plea for Labour to be “whiter than white”.
Mr Blair’s family was embarrassed by property deals involving a convicted fraudster, while allegations of “cash-for-peerages” fuelled fevered speculation that the Labour prime minister would be quizzed by the police.
For all the Westminster excitement, the supposed sleaze had minimal electoral effect with many voters perceiving the government to be competent, in its early years at least. A similar mood appears to be prevailing among voters now.
A YouGov poll this week gave the Tories an astonishing 11 per cent lead over Labour.
Anecdotal reports from the campaign trail in the North of England seats that swung to drive Mr Johnson’s 2019 landslide victory say the issue of his flat funding is rarely mentioned on doorsteps.
If anything, recent events are confirming the perception of the Prime Minister as a refreshingly unorthodox politician supremely capable of getting his own way.
In the mould of Harry Callahan in Clint Eastwood’s cop movies, he delivers by refusing to be bound by conventional rules.
VOTERS asked to give their verdict in broadcast interviews frequently say that if the PM’s conduct did not increase the cost to the taxpayer then they do not care.
Such disinterest is unlikely to put Ms Reeves off her campaign of vitriol against the Tories.
Some Labour insiders suggest she could well be a contender in a future party leadership contest and believe her sleaze-finder general antics will raise her standing among MPs and grassroots members.
A vote in next week’s “Super Thursday” local polls and the crunch by-election in Hartlepool which is in line with current forecasts could trigger a Labour leadership crisis that ushers in that contest much sooner than she or Sir Keir expected.